Former Baffin Fisheries CEO charged with fraud

The former CEO of Baffin Fisheries has been charged with defrauding the Inuit-owned company.

Garth Reid faces charges of fraud over $5,000 and criminal breach of trust, according to documents filed in Newfoundland and Labrador court Jan. 26.

The charges date back to a period between October 2016 and April 2017, when Reid still served as CEO of the company.

Baffin Fisheries is owned by five Inuit hunters and trappers associations in the Baffin region of Nunavut. 

Those groups jointly filed a lawsuit in 2017 alleging Reid and his wife unlawfully spent the company’s funds for their personal use, namely the construction of a “lavish mansion and guest house” in Winterton, on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula.

In 2019, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled that Reid must pay back $544,049, plus interest and legal costs, to the company.

Reid, 51, is due back in St. John’s court on March 16 to respond to these latest criminal charges.

Baffin Fisheries’ corporate office is in Iqaluit, but the company has operations offices in Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet and Paradise, N.L.